Crucify
by Shannon Carlyle
Summary: Ichigo is drowning and Orihime is drowning alongside with him. Rukia has gone away and took Ichigo's heart with her. She was pierced by Aizen's sword, and the only thing Ichigo can't fight is the irreversibility of her death. Ichigo's POV.


I looked at the trees, the trees that embroidered the sky. It was autumn.  
While I was looking at them, I was thinking about the wideness of the world, about the seasons, about the intensity of that fresh, nippy air that touched my cheeks while I was walking home from school.  
And suddenly a thought hit me, it went through my body releasing a pain discharge like an electric shock: Rukia had disappeared from all of this.  
But, unexplainably, I felt like she was there. That she was inside those branches that were gently rocking far away, in the light blue of that sky that towered me… I could see her, no, I could _feel_ her in the dewdrops, in the white houses and in their yards; on the steps of the underground, in the flowers on the kerbside, in the ramification of the streets.  
I saw her everywhere… because everywhere is where I sought her. In every single thing, in all that surrounded me, I was looking for her. Because I couldn't look for her anywhere else. Because I hoped that, if I sought everywhere, one day maybe I would have found her.

I could never "accept".  
I would have fought until I'd lost my mortal life and even my immortal one, instead, but surrendering and taking someone else's decision, no, that I couldn't do.  
But with her I was always forced to.  
I had to "accept" that she descended on my life with a leap as well as I had to "accept" her going away in the space of that nauseating instant, physically painful even in the memories. I immediately understood that there was nothing I could scream to fight her death. I could have stabbed everyone with my zanpakuto, and that is actually what I did, but it didn't bring her back to me, I got it even back then.

What does death matter, I had always thought, when there exists the promise that one day, in the infinite sprawling of centuries…

As the years were passing by I had forgotten something; something that, back when I lost my mother, had hurt me even more than death itself.  
There were, of course, pain and helplessness and solitude, and they had crushed me on my face in a way that, after seven years, was still able to make me kneel. But in my heart of hearts, I knew that there was something else. And that there was just one place in the world from which I couldn't come back.  
Awareness.  
Knowing, deep inside my heart, that even loss could happen.

So I went down to the river, in the park where she taught me how to fight hollows, but it wasn't enough. I went to the sea, then. The amenity of the sea was the hope that it would give me a new horizon.  
But not only that.  
There was a reason why I wandered along the river, took the train to the sea, raised my eyes to the sky. I was seeking other places. I wanted to go; away from Karakura, where a gloomy, destroyed, almost robotic version of me was taking roots, and find a place where a new lymph could restore me, a new sun could bathe me, a new dew could roll off me. A place where I could be given birth again. Where Ichigo was something different from what I had become; it didn't matter what he would have turned into, as long as he was _different_.  
I was ready to go for good; awareness pressed me, reminding me that I couldn't leave my memories locked into the closet together with my old t-shirts, that they would grasp my shoulders for my whole life; but I decided that I had already "accepted" way too much, and that I wanted to be completely unaware.  
The void of unawareness sounded like a blessing, as if bells were singing out a joyous peal for a new baptism.

But then I saw Yuzu's eyes full of tears, and Karin's, dry and angry, always so angry; and behind those two couples of identical eyes there was the same sadness, the same refusal against the world and what happened in it.  
And then, the eyes of my father, behind which I now sighted a far, far away stretch of desert landscape that resembled the sands of Las Noches.  
Rukia was gone and I had decided to run away, but if I had gone, where would _they_ go then? What right did I have to take a son and a brother away from them, bringing him away and never give him back to them?  
How could it be that even this time I wasn't able to do something for the people I loved?

So I stayed.  
I stayed, in order to not have to live with the thought ok Karin looking for me in the branches of trees, Yuzu looking in the light blue sky, my father looking in the houses and their yards.  
But life is a game of losses and replacements, and it would have been that way even if I had decided to stay. Rukia had replaced Kaiendono, I had to replace Rukia, and now my family had to replace me, who, in spite of living in their houses, in the end it was just as if I had gone.  
Yes; it was a game of losses and replacement, with no interruptions to the chain. The first ring is the most important because it has the huge advantage of not having to shake off anyone's memory.

Forgive me for making you the umpteenth ring of this endless chain of pain.  
Which, exactly like the chain of fate, in the moment it is cut-off it frees all the hatred and the regret and the desperation.  
Forgive me for not having the courage to interrupt it.

But just as seven years before all I could do was wandering, going down to the river and ask myself, my mother, the high blades of grass why I couldn't protect her.  
"She gave me power just so that I could _protect"_ I clenched my teeth "instead, it had to be her… that I…"  
I couldn't give myself an answer. My mother stayed quiet and smiled among the white and bright clouds. The blades of grass rustled in the caress of the wind, raising a scent of nature and some daisy petals, but they never told me what was wrong with me.  
So I asked the river, hoping that the gentle criss-cross of the waves would write an answer. But the river flew. My life itself kept on flowing, but the answer didn't come.  
"Why couldn't I protect her?"  
But I still had to wake up every morning to go to school, I still had to study to avoid the preaches in the headmaster's office, as if, at that point, I still cared – and I still had to have breakfast and lunch and dinner with my family, trying to talk. To say something – what? My mouth had run dry. There was nothing in my mind, and what was there didn't sound worth enough to be said out loud.  
The truth is, the same question echoed in my mind over and over again.  
It gave me no peace; it haunted me night and day. I couldn't spend a minute free from that question. Unfailingly, like a shock, the thought of her death battered me from head to feet and forced me to go back to my pain, and I was _happy_ to go back to it because I was sure that it was my _duty_ to focus on that pain, to throw my whole self against it.  
I let it devour me, almost hoping I could find redemption in that lapse into sufferance: if I let it destroy me, then maybe I could forgive myself. And only then I would have really paid for what I had done – for what I had _not_ done.  
Two women: I have loved only two women in my life.  
I've never had that courage that everyone seemed to see in me, ever. I've asked others to lend it to me; and twice the gods sent to my side someone who plunged his immaculate hands in my chest to look for it, and then to softly lay it on my wide-open hands.  
I, who was never brave, have had the two bravest women I've ever known by my side.  
Or maybe I didn't. Rukia was a coward like me, after all. Maybe that's why she knew how much I needed someone to tell me I could win, I could become strong, I could, I could, I _could_.  
I had gone through grey years before I knew her, which were only coloured by the fights with senpais, by the arguments with teachers, by the mess of friends and relatives; I couldn't stand all of that, as if my eardrums were too sensitive and amplified whispers in deafening screams.  
Yes, they coloured my life a little bit, but with dark colours. Deep blue, sombre black, purplish red.  
And after those six long years, a ray of light came: someone who had bothered to look inside me and seek _true_ courage, not the fierceness I feigned at fifteen in the fights with the yobbos of my neighbourhood. That wasn't courage: that was the armour I had built around myself by dint of beating, a layer of infrangible corn gave me the illusion I couldn't be hurt, and my enemies the illusion that they couldn't hurt me.  
But the truth is they hurt me every time, and every time I hardened my armour to convince myself It wasn't possible to lay a hand on me. To convince the others, too. Many of them believed it; unfortunately, Inoue, you did too. That's why I could never give you what you where asking me for.  
I've loved only two women in my life: and I've loved them because they were the only ones to notice that crying kid, pushed to the ground by someone who was stronger than him.  
Until Rukia appeared in my life everyone had always seemed incredibly stronger than me. As I once told to Ichimaru, each fight was driven by the desperation I had inside: it was a bet against a destiny that I always felt was adverse _to me_.  
And there was Chado next to me, but that was the problem, he was just next to me, a fellow warrior. In front of me there was never a back to stand out and protect me; there were only enemies, and a friend who, like me, tried to face them with the few means he had.  
Two women, I had the courage to love just two women.  
Just two. And both of them were taken away from me.

You were there too, that day, behind me. As always, behind me. I'm not blaming you for that; I know that if you could you would have been next to me, too.  
But it wasn't enough for her to stay next to me and she threw herself at him. She didn't like to let others defend her. You remember that, don't you? How she kicked and screamed and cried, a long time before, so that I went back, so that I let her die in Seireitei. Remember when you told me that it didn't matter that I won, as long as I didn't let Grimmjow slay me?  
She told me that it didn't matter too, that she could even die, as long as I didn't let Senbonzakura tear me into pieces.  
She's always had that silly belief that her life wasn't worth fighting against the ones who aimed to put an end to it. As if she had been given it by accident and had brought it along without much conviction, waiting for something to finally interrupt it. And she would have done anything to avoid entrusting others with the weight of her existence, too heavy even for herself.  
You see; I was ready to take care of that weight for her. Was life hateful to her? Ok, so I would have made it blossom and sing and shine, whatever that should take me.  
I relied on it, you know? I thought that one day I would have risen up to heaven too, and then one day they would have let me descend back here, and maybe I would have been a stronger man, less weakened by love and nostalgia, and she would have been a serene woman, with no more signs of that pain that was identical to mine; regret, guilt, the shame of having survived.  
Or maybe, buried in the mausoleum of our souls, we would have treasured the far away memory of those wounds, and just thanks to that invisible thread we would find each other again; our identical voids would fit into each other again, like ying and yang, and we would know that we had already met. That between us there was a bound that exceeded and overwhelmed the boundaries of space and time. I would recognize her profile in the crowded city in twenty, fifty, a hundred years, and a lightning would cross my sight and I would know that it was her, her, the only one that destiny had meant to place by my side.  
Maybe, one day, I'll see my mother again: and I will know it's her when I'll see a sweet smile and a hand held out to me, ready to pick me up. I know she will be back. I know she can do it.  
But Rukia is never going to come back again, and that day her soul vanished into my arms like silver dust; she died the same, quiet way as Ulquiorra, with a noble's class until the very last moment.  
What is soul? What remains of us, once our mortal remains are buried?  
Memories, joys, pains, anxieties, expectations, disappointments, hopes, wounds, successes. All that was locked inside of Rukia faded into the void of eternity, and there was nothing I could do to stop that.  
Again.  
I front of my eyes, again.  
I've always felt like my fate was losing something very important to me.

The moment of death is brief.  
Actually, so brief that I wasn't sure it had really happened. Death, I must have thought, is too huge to happen in so little a space, so little that if you're not paying attention you may miss it. That's what I thought. That day, despite my eyes seeing that moment, I didn't believe it.  
But then days went by. And I remembered that death isn't brief: death is slow, wearing, exhausting; and once decease is left behind, days throng with a heart-rending slothfulness.  
They still do. Pain may be less hammering, less excruciating, but the hours spent without her will always be endless, as if I had drunk Captain Kurotsuchi's poison. In a hundred years I will still be praying for that blade to pierce my heart. Even death will be good, as long as it stops this poison running through my veins and preventing me from breathing, talking and living.  
Forgive me for being always silent in front of you, but I'm afraid that if I opened my mouth tears would start pouring. I don't think I can stop them.

And you, who have lost everything in your life, you should understand.  
Focus this scene: when I was home I looked for her in every room, filled with hope, but she wasn't there.  
I looked a second time, went round the whole house, convinced myself that se was behind my back, making fun of me, hiding from a room to another; sooner or later, I told myself, she will pop-up and call me a fool, and I will call her stupid and everything will return to as it used to be. I kept my years open, waiting for her imperceptible steps.  
But she never appeared.  
I went out, wandered the whole Karakura, I even went out of town. I made stops in the park, checked the bushes with the corner of the eye, thinking that she was back there and that she didn't want me to see her; I pretended I wasn't looking for her. Then maybe she would have come out of her hiding place, because she was sure not to be seen. And I would have turned around, open arms, and surprised her by exclaiming "welcome back!".  
But she didn't come back.  
I stared relentlessly at the light blue sky during the day and at the dark blue sky during the night; I hoped she would have fallen from above, or that I would have caught a glimpse of her leaping nimbly from a roof to another.  
But she wasn't here. Nights were empty and days were eerie.  
Days, especially, were gloomy and thick like rigid plastic. Air was heavy, I couldn't breath it; sometimes anguish took my breath away, and I grasped my chest, sure that I would have died at any moment, that I would have died at sixteen; died of "loss".  
I had the constant feeling that a catastrophe was going to happen. Rukia had gone: the world, as far as I knew, was heading to its end.  
And so was I.

In those moments, when I looked at everything as if I was in vigil coma, you pushed to enter my life and eventually you tore down the wall; since I didn't have the strength to fight the pressure, after a short resistance I let you in.  
Someday, I thought, I'll have to let someone in: if it had to be someone, then, of everyone, I preferred it to be you. Who else? You were the only one I could share it with. The only one who knew, the only one who maybe _understood_.  
You asked me to go to the mall. And I said yes, because, after a brief reflection, I didn't see any reasons to say no. Should I deny myself everything? Was it part of the redemption path? Or maybe, just for a few hours, I could detach myself from that pain that dragged me, my eyes, my shoulders, my heart down, stronger than gravity?  
This is my only guilt: not being able to put aside. I should have answered: "No, Inoue, I can't. I would end up hurting you. My father raised me like this: stupid, incapable of forgetting."  
I didn't.  
And now I don't even dare to ask you to forgive me.

But didn't I tell you? I told you I had always needed a source from which I could draw courage.  
The reason why I couldn't return your feelings is just that that source should have been you.  
But you're fragile. I can see that. You're fragile as a spider web. Invisible and light. It just takes a careless gesture to ruin a whole life's harsh work; they pass through you without even acknowledging you, pulling you until they break you. That delicate embroidery of bright threads unleash without making a sound, it lets itself die with placid resignation.  
And every time the patient arachnid builds it again, holding the threads within its teeth and taking one little step at a time, but in the end, if it isn't disturbed of interrupted, it builds a magnificent cloth of silver knots, which is a hundred, a thousand times bigger than its own stature.  
That's what you are like.  
But a spider web cannot take the weight of a life that's drowning like an iron anchor thrown into the ocean floor. How could you? Asking you to do that would be cruel.  
And Tatsuki doesn't forgive me for being weak, and she's right, one hundred times right; she hates my from the bottom of her heart for not being able to protect that fine web, and I hate my self as well. Now I am the one who breaks it over and over again, who take it off from the wall it is weakly holding to. And all that I find left on me are bright threads that shine for a moment, to remind me that you're there, and then vanish to remind me that I'm killing you.  
I don't dare asking your forgiveness, because there aren't even words for that. To say what's in my deepest heart. To say what's in yours.  
There are no words of apology for all this.

-Ah… ah! Ku-Kurosakikun… uh… nh! Kuro… Kurosakikun…  
Even at this juncture, you keep calling my name. You keep calling me name, always, as to call me back to you; as to ask me to stay with you, with my heart, my spirit, _kokoro_.  
My soul breaks apart each time a realise how much you fear that I'm going away from you; that in those moments I am far from you, in a dreamy trance, still chasing thin arms.  
It breaks apart each time that, as it always happen while awakening, I realise that even this time I was dreaming.

In my dreams, I tell her all the things I had locked up inside of me when she was here, by my side.  
Never shut up what you heart begs you to communicate. If you love someone, shout it.  
Make it so that your voice reaches him, yell, run, fight. But tell him. Tell him before he's gone forever. The time we have here is ending and the clock is ticking.

My father once told me that my name designates the destiny of someone who was meant to protect. And yet, although you are the one who, more than anyone else, seems to be meant to be protected by me, I can't feel it when I'm touching you.  
You're too much for my arms.  
You're beautiful, I know that. But you're tall, with a sound constitution. Your body is prosperity and fecundity; your hair is long, so long, and shiny; sparkly, almost blinding.  
And you're beautiful.  
But you're not her.  
I spread my arms to hold you, I stretch my muscles to lift your weight; I'll never be able to hide your body behind mine. I _feel that _I can't cover you up. I feel I can't shelter you in my chest like a birdie in its nest.  
It's just a physical sensation, it's just body, flesh and blood, but why does even my body scream that it wants her back?  
I'm sixteen and you're gorgeous. You're the only woman who can get near to my soul without bouncing back and crash to the ground, hurt. And for a moment I thought that maybe I could do it, with you; that you would make me smile, that you would give me some of that mirth of yours.  
And I believed that for days, weeks, months, but your mirth wasn't transmitted to me together with our bodily fluids. Our sadness fused and melt together instead; by now, our souls are poisoned to the marrow; annihilation flows merciless through our blood.  
I'm still looking for someone who kicks me and tells me what is there inside me, since I don't know that, who tells me what to do and who I really am because, again, I don't know that.  
How can I ask you what to do? How can I when you hold on to me, when I am your lifeline?  
Nonetheless, am I doing better, by saying nothing at all…?

"Kurosakikun, thank you so much for this day together! I had so much fun. I hope we can hang out together again, sometimes!"  
You looked at me as your whole life depended on my words.  
"I-I mean, of course, only if you feel like it, Kurosakikun! I don't want to force you to do anything at all! Hehe, feel free to say no, don't you worry about me; you know what? Forget what I said, ok? I…"  
"Yo, Inoue. Relax. We can go to the mall again, if you want to."  
"Eeeh? Wo… Would you really like to hang out with me again? Wow! I mean, that would be nice. Thank you for inviting me, Kurosaki."  
And I tried to smile, because I _wanted_ to smile in front of your liveliness and your kindness; but I couldn't. My lips didn't open. My eyes were burning.  
From that day, I had never found something so extraordinary to rip me out of the catatonia I was in.  
But you… you bursted in such a sweet and joyful smile that, hadn't I had a whole where there once was my heart, just like a man you know very well, I would have grabbed your face and kissed you, and made you happy as you deserved and still deserve to be.  
But those days, just like now, it felt like someone had pierced my chest with an arm, taking away my heart and throwing it to the ground, behind my back, still bleeding and pulsing.  
"Mmh… well, Kurosakikun… so, would you like a tea? Before going back home?"  
You were acting weird; you rubbed the tip of your toes oh the floor, kept your hands behind your back and your head bowed; you blushed, and you seemed embarrassed.  
"Well, ok, I don't mind. Are you sure I'm not troubling you?"  
"Of course not! Never! Er... I mean, please, come in, Kurosakikun. I'm sorry, my house is a little bit messy…"  
There was no mess at all; to be honest, there was almost nothing in that one-room apartment. There were a few pots in the sink, the school uniform leaning on a chair, and nothing else. It really was the house of someone who had just arrived and didn't think they would have stayed much.  
That's the kind of attitude you've always had with everyone: you act like you were the last to arrive and you seem sure that very soon someone's going to chase you away.  
"May I come in?"  
"Oh… please! Come in!"  
I looked around me and I couldn't believe that a fifteen years old girl owned so much. The photo of her brother, the hairclips with the daisies and the school uniform. That was all Orihime Inoue had in the world.  
"Please have a sit, Kurosakikun. Which kind of tea do you prefer? Darjeeling, Earl Grey, maybe an English fruit flavoured tea, our… oh, no!"  
"What?"  
"I'm so sorry, Kurosakikun! I forgot that I never have tea. I do when I go to the café with Tatsuki, but I don't have any at home. I-I'm so sorry!"  
"Never mind. It's ok. Do you have a Coke?"  
"Y-yes…"  
You walked glancing down and you were, contrite, almost hunched. I was surprised at how sad you looked.  
"Yo; is it because you didn't offer me a tea, that you have that woeful face?"  
"Oh… no, Kurosakikun, it isn't that; it's just that… you see… I… I wouldn't want you to think that it all was an excuse to make you come here."  
"Huh? An excuse…?"  
"Mh… to make you come to my house."  
"Hmph; I didn't think of that for a moment. If you want to offer me a Coke, that's ok to me. Or we can go to the café and have a tea."  
"Kurosaki" you were smiling to me as if you really loved me "thank you."  
I know those words meant "I love you". Even back then. I just didn't know ho to avoid saying something back.  
So, in order to avoid mistakes, I pretended I didn't hear it, even if it was shouting its head off behind your words.  
"So… if… if a Coke's ok, too… would you mind if we stayed here?"  
You blushed and, while I heard your voice turning into a peep, I must have looked surprised, because you immediately got uncomfortable.  
"Aaah! K-Kurosakikun, I-I… oh, I'm so ashamed of myself! Now you'll really think that I wanted to force you into staying here with a trick!"  
"Well, no, Inoue, I don't, but since you keep repeating it, I'm starting to think that maybe you want me to stay here."  
"N-no! I absolutely don't! I mean-yes! I'd be super happy if you stayed here! I would be… I would be the happiest girl on earth! I mean, just 'happy', not 'excessively happy'. I'd just be…"  
"Inoue."  
"… yes…?"  
"There nothing wrong in not wanting to be alone."  
You lowered your eyes. It wasn't that, I knew it.  
"It's not that, Kurosakikun."  
"I know."  
"I'd like you to stay. I try not to, but… that's what I long for, from the bottom of my heart." Your eyes became watery. "Forgive me, Kurosakikun."  
"Tsk." I lowered my eyes to the pavement. "There's nothing to be sorry for."  
"Kurosakikun…"  
How many times I heard you say it. My name. Always with that worried tone, as if every time you were asking me how it all would have ended up.  
I didn't know that. I promise, I didn't know it would have ended up that way.  
Had I known, I would never have stood up. Never touched your shoulder. Even if I just meant to comfort you.  
"Oh…!"  
Your reactions were always so genuine and pure.  
"I… I didn't want to be pathetic. Kurosakikun, please forget these tears!"  
"That's not possible" I shook my head.  
"I don't want you to see me like this."  
"I've seen you like this hundreds of times. I wouldn't worry if I were you."  
"Forgive me, forgive me, Kurosakikun…"  
You threw yourself into my arms and, despite feeling the blow, I held you somehow, clumsily and rigidly, as if you were made of ice and hurt to the touch.  
You were crying and I bowed my head over yours, leaning the end of my nose and my lips on your hair. I could see what you were feeling. And I was saddened by your tears, and moved by your desperate love.  
The fact that your desperate love was for me, the fact that I couldn't return it, in that crazy moment didn't seem an important detail.  
But I soon knew it was.  
And you soon knew what you were asking me to forgive you for. You were asking me to forgive you for drawing me to your house and throwing yourself into my arms, begging me to save you. Knowing that I couldn't. Knowing that I needed to be saved more than you did, and knowing by whom.

Our head share the same colours: the colours of fire, of sunset, of autumn. Those warm, melancholic colours that catch the eyes of people, because they represent the last spark of something once alive that is dying.

"K… Kurosakikun…"  
Your voice had turned into a whisper while you were raising your face from my chest, staring into my eyes. On your irises wavering reflections were dancing, as unstable as our intentions.  
"Kuro… sakikun…"  
You called me again."  
"I…"  
And you called yourself, too, to make sure you were not running away from yourself even this time.  
And then, a millimetre at a time, while I was looking at you, waiting – it felt like it wasn't really happening; I was observing the events with an almost scientific approach – you brought your lips closer to mine, and when you touched them, and I didn't draw away, you shaked.  
In a tender way, which was amazing in a fifteen-years-old who had experienced perversion.  
But I blinked and recorded what had just happened. It didn't seem so special. Maybe because it hadn't happened with Her.  
That first time, and all the other times to follow, you pretended not to see what was there behind my eyes. You leaned your lips on mine much more eagerness, your eyes shut, as if to say: whatever's inside your eyes, I don't want to see it now.  
We never looked again inside each other's eyes.  
We still don't.  
I ask myself, more and more often, if we ever will.

And forgive me for always going away. Forgive me, forgive me for going away.  
But when I open my eyes again, and I wake up in your bed, and air is heavy and there's silence between us, every single time I realize that I can't leave you alone with the likes of me. An idiot who doesn't have the strength to stop all this; an imbecile who isn't able to live, who can't be a support for anyone.  
And if I hate myself so much, let alone how much _you_ must hate me.  
If I crossed swords with myself, now, what would I see? What would I feel? What would Zangetsu say about my heart?  
You never turn me out of your house, although I know I'd deserve it. Probably, when it's all over, you want me to get away from you, just as I do, to avoid reminding yourself what we are doing. What _I _am doing, to you. What _you_ are doing, to yourself.  
Why do you let me do that to you, Inoue…? Is it how much you want me next to you? Is it…?  
And why do I let myself doing it…?  
I once was capable of giving myself a limit, of generating a resolution. Back then I wouldn't have been a coward. I would have told myself I was screwing things up and I would have stopped all this for good; maybe, I wouldn't have even started it. I once had this strength. Did She take it away with her…?  
Maybe the thing is just that it was easy, to me, to be resolute in battles, since I've always lived in the battle; but I never knew how to treat those who didn't attack me, who didn't have a sword to attack nor to defend themselves.  
Kenpachi was right. I'm a beast just like he is.  
I'm becoming a Hollow without a mask, already empty before my death.

_Come back_, I ask her everyday. _Come back_, I beg her. Don't leave me here alone. Don't leave me in the middle of all this. Without you, I can't do it. Without you I can do nothing that doesn't result in a complete disaster, defeat and dishonour.  
I want to stroke your little face, see your eyes open wide and follow the highlights of your black hair. I want to hold you into my arms, seize you against my chest.  
I ask her everyday.  
_Come back. Come back. Come back._  
If only there was something I could do, anything to make her come back, I would do it. I don't care what it is; I would. When your beloved ones are alive, you don't understand what it is, not being able to change things, when things are "you can never see the face of the person you love again". Now I do. And if I could choose any other grief instead of this, I would bare it. I would bare anything. I would become strong. I would never fail in anything. Everything, in order to get her back here.  
But all I can do is look for her in the streets of the world, hoping it's not true that death is irreversible as they have always told us; hoping it was a lie, hoping I still have a last chance – _I won't waste it_, I swear every time, _I swear that if you give me Rukia back I will never do a single mistake ever again_.  
When I notice that my pleas aren't given any answers, I state: _It didn't really happen_. _It's not true_. Every time I fool myself into thinking that tomorrow I will wake up and she will jump off the closet; sometimes I fool myself so intensely that I become sure of it, because if I didn't, the mere duty of getting up in the morning and standing up and breath would be unbearable.  
As unbearable as those moments when lucidity takes the lead and I realise that it's all true. And that time doesn't turn back. It won't, even if it was to give me back Rukia; it flows, merciless, careless of the never-ending cry in my heart.  
And everything else, compared, seems so paltry that I can't help looking at it with these indifferent eyes.  
But I don't, I absolutely don't want to look at you this way. Tell me it's not the way I look at you. Not you; you are so good, always by my side; not you, who are among those very few I don't want to hurt.  
Tell me my eyes don't pass through you, as it does with the rest of the world, as they all were ectoplasms, nothing but spirits, fated to disappear.

You see; I'm afraid to forget her. If she doesn't live in my memory, where, then? So I try to cherish that pain in my heart, because that's where she exists; she can't keep on living in any other place on earth or in heaven.  
To let go of this self-torture would mean that I let her go, too.  
Forgive me for not being able to live far away from the memory I have of her.  
See? See how I am? Just like my father. I can't even let the dead go.

Will I become just like her? A container full of memories?  
Will you, too?  
Someday this fear of being alone will kill you; I guess you have gotten it, by now.  
It will kill you on the inside, because it will mangle your spirit and disintegrate the slightest bit of fortitude you have left; when you depend on the others and not on yourself, both solitude and company may become lethal conditions.  
But it will kill you on the outside, too, because you allow the world to hurt you. Do you mean to let anyone get close to you, even if they hurt you, as long as you don't have to listen to the silence?  
Look at you. Look at us. Look at the tape of that day, look at them, those sixteen years old bodies who have set in their face the eyes of someone who has lived a hundred years, just like Toshiro. Look at what they're doing.  
Maybe, just as I do, you'll find yourself thinking you'd like hold out your hand and stop them; hurry, before they take that path that bend their foreheads, as if they were hit a thousand times by Wabisuke.

"Oh, I… Kurosakikun…"  
There was astonishment in your eyes. Probably, there was a lot in mine, too.  
But I kept my arms around your hips, and you didn't draw back back.  
I could give you that chance to run.  
I didn't.  
I'd like to hold out my hand so badly.  
"We…"  
You bowed your head; I did the same. Our faces where close; when you raised yours, our lips met again, and this time if was softer and slower. I tasted you as I could do with a new dish I had never tried before, you devoured me as if I was your favourite dish that you had denied yourself for a long time and you had finally allowed yourself.  
Your hands climbed on my back and your fingers held me; my instinct pushed me against you and, though my cheeks were boiling, I held you.  
Instinct and loneliness were the ones to guide us both to that bed, spinning locked in an embrace, our eyes closed, blissfully unaware.  
Ahh, unawareness, throwing ourselves unconsciously: how much I had sought for this.  
Instinct and loneliness, and you were even escorted by that bastard named Love.  
I took off your clothes one piece at the time, revealing the curves that pushed to escape from that clothing trap; I observed the fullness of your breasts, which were free now, the bold curve of your soft hips. Your long fingers wandered on my whole body, but my response to that touch seemed more physiologic than emotional: answers from my body didn't fail to come, but they were more about a cause and effect reaction than being overwhelmed by the senses. But I kept on. And you, mad with joy, let me finally touch you, look at you, disclosed you entirely as you had always wanted me to see you.  
I was reluctant to le you see me; I had never let anyone do it. But I soon got used to it, because unconsciousness makes you forget even this, and I had sunk into it dead weight.  
It was only once, after pleasing both of us, I came out of your body, dirtying your thighs with a sticky fluid, that I felt like I was dying.  
It had been my first time, but when I lowered my eyes I saw someone who wasn't Her.  
I couldn't look in your eyes. But it was no problem, because you did everything you could to avoid looking into mine.  
We nourished our sadness apart from each other, laying side to side, and the remaining warmth of our bodies was still palpable; but our minds weren't free, they weren't laying on the soft meadow of unconsciousness anymore. Once those moments were over, the almost overflowing fullness we had just experiences were not conceded to us anymore.  
That's why we increased our encounters, so that we could experience them more often; that's why we see each other almost everyday after school.  
That's why I always leave afterwards. Because afterwards we're as distant as we had been close before.

I know it's not enough to receive your absolution: I wouldn't grant me grace too, if I were in your place and I had to decide what to do with Ichigo Kurosaki: a derelict, an outcast, a vile brat who flounders in the mud.  
One thing is not being able to get by in the world, but making the others the victim of your own stupidity…?  
If I were my old self, I would have kicked such an idiot until he couldn't get up anymore. I would have drowned him in that mud, pushing with my foot on his head until he would get off my furious sight.  
I miss that old Ichigo I have been. And I guess you miss old Inoue, too.  
But we know that, don't we?  
There are no such things as old Ichigo or old Inoue. We're always ourselves, our stupid, inept selves. We've never changed. They just gave us a chance of showing the worst of us, and since we weren't able to do it by ourselves, we seized it, almost relieved.  
I often think that now Uraharasan would tell me I would be right to look for an excuse to go kill myself.  
And you me I don't deserve to die at all, instead. You would tell me you want me to live. I know that very well, I know you, Inoue; while I can't forget, you can't remember. It's not you, to hold grudge against people. You would absolve me.  
Because both your old self and the one who now looks at me with those sad eyes are women who can't push people aside.  
And I will always be a coward man, who's not able to keep them near to him.  
You know that too, right? You perceive it too, that our two paths are…  
… no, it's better not to speak. Let's be silent in front of the truth even today. In front of the immutability of what Heaven has inflicted us, I can't see why we can't preserve immutable even our insignificant human existences.

Does it still make sense for us to ask for grace?  
Maybe there's no such thing as grace for the likes of us.  
Once you're cursed, you can't ever find redemption.

The white bone mask burns like fire underneath my skin.

(A/N: Hi I hope you liked my fanfiction. I wrote it more than two years ago but for some reason this is the only one among my works that I still like XD  
This is actually a translation: I hope I did a good job, but if you've found any mistakes, please let me know ^^ it would help me a lot improving my English. It was really difficult to translate it because I didn't know how to render some metaphors, some affected words and some synonyms; I had tried to use a language that was more akin to poetry than to prose. Most of all I had trouble with the syntactic structure of English which is much more strict than the Italian one, so it doesn't exactly "sound" like the original version and doesn't have the same musicality. But oh well. It's normal in translation to lose some meaning.  
This fanfiction is linked to another one I wrote, Meant to Live, which is the same story from Orihime's point of view; I haven't translated it yet, but I hope I'll find the time to do it soon  
And finally, the title comes from a Tori Amos song, Crucify.)


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